What You’re Not Supposed to Notice

As we are all told, it is wrong, wrong, wrong to stereotype gay men as sexually insatiable and indiscriminate. If you have a negative or even somewhat critical view of gay male culture, you are not entitled to notice things like this Salon article. Excerpt:

If you’ve ever pulled over to a rest area, you’ve been near men having sex. I’m one of those men, I’ve done it a hundred times; we go into the woods or a truck with tinted windows, in a stall under cold light. It never stops, not for season or time. In the winter, men trudge through snow to be with each other, in the summer, men leave the woods with ticks clinging to their legs. Have you ever stopped at a rest area and found it completely empty? There’s always one man there, in his car, waiting to meet someone new.

This has been going on for a long, long time. The new ways that men meet — endlessly staring into phones, searching on hookup apps like Grindr or sites like Manhunt — haven’t changed the fact that we’re still having sex at rest areas, because they offer something different. For the man who is unsure of his sexuality, or unsure of how to tell others about it, for the man who has a family but feels new desires (or old, hidden ones) unfolding inside of him, the website and the phone apps are just too certain of themselves. They’re for gay men who want to have gay sex. Sex at the rest area, instead, abolishes identity; there’s a sort of freedom there to not be anything – instead, men just meet other men there; men who want the same sort of freedom.

The writer celebrates having sex in the bushes and public bathrooms as an existential act:

After awhile I began to develop a strange feeling at rest areas, like I was giving myself to someone. Not that I gave my full self, but that the part of myself I did give was complete. There was no pretense, no awkward conversation or dancing around whether or not I should be attracted to somebody. There was no wondering if someone was straight or gay; there was no sexual orientation at all. We were just there, together, as ourselves.

Years ago, a gay friend showed me a copy of a popular gay travel guide. It included listings for gay bars, gay-friendly hotels, gay-friendly restaurants and attractions. The usual. But it also included information about the best places for men to go to have anonymous sex in public. I thought that was so bizarre. But this was presented in the guidebook as if it were a normal thing for the gay male traveler (but not, of course, lesbians) to want to know about a city.

What I don’t get is why it is only permissible within our media culture to observe things like this guy’s celebration of the rest-stop liberty if you find it something worth celebrating, or at least morally neutral. If you read this and make a negative judgment on this guy and the culture that celebrates his kink, then you are some sort of bigot. In the past, gay friends who want nothing to do with this kind of thing have told me there’s intense pressure within the gay male community not to criticize it, at the expense of being labeled “self-hating,” or some sort of Uncle Tom.

The same dynamic happens when it comes to thug culture and young black males. It is fine to observe thug culture and celebrate its transgressive qualities (valorizing “bitches,” “hos,” pimps, murder, materialism, and so forth), but you can’t look at it and say, “That’s a degenerate way of looking at the world and other people, and anybody who embraces it is messed up.” That would be bigoted.

It all reminds me of my 16 year old self dressing up in New Wave gear, and going to the grocery store in my hometown. If anybody stared at me strangely — which would have been natural, given that most teenagers here didn’t wear get-ups like mine — I seethed inside over how prejudiced, how judgmental they were. But if they didn’t seem to notice me, that bothered me too. For teenaged me, the only acceptable response from others was some form of, “Wow, you’re so cool, you’re such a rebel. I admire you for attracting the scorn of others. They only show how bad they are by judging you negatively.”

Well, I grew up. Most of us do. And growing up means coming to understand that there are consequences for the choices we make. Of course people may judge us unfairly, but we can’t expect to defy social convention and avoid all consequences for our freely-made choices. It may strike you as unfair that the corporation you’ve applied to work for makes you put on a suit and take the ring out of your lip in the workplace, but honestly? Nobody really cares. Because we are social creatures, and have evolved to be social creatures, conformity to a certain degree is inevitable. If you don’t wish to conform, if you wish to despise and reject society and its morals and conventions, you have that right. But own it. You can’t tell ordinary people to go to hell, so to speak, and then expect them to not pass judgment on you. You can get away with that when your 16, if you have parents who love you and are willing to tolerate your nonsense, knowing that it’s just a phase, but the act wears real thin. If you dress like a thug, for example, you should not be surprised when people judge you a thug. If you seek out anonymous sex in rest stops and a significant part of your culture considers that normal and even positive, you should not be surprised when people outside your culture form a negative opinion. That’s how the real world works.

And yes, if you wear a Confederate flag on your shirt and walk into a black neighborhood, or even just into a public place where people may not appreciate the semiotical nuances of your garb, you should not be surprised when people think, however mistakenly, that you’re a racist redneck. That judgment, though, is acceptable in mainstream media culture, in a way that scorning Rest Stop Guy or Thug Teen wouldn’t be. Some rebels are more rebellious than others.

UPDATE: No, I’m not saying that Trayvon Martin brought his killing onto himself by the way he was dressed, if that’s what you’re thinking. I actually have no idea how he was dressed, other than the hoodie. I have a hoodie myself. My white, small-town, middle class 13 year old niece wears hoodies. That means nothing.

“There is a general form of reasoning to which I shall give the name ‘argumentum ad consummationem’, which runs as follows. Major premise: Sexual attraction and love are determinants of human happiness and should be consummated where sincerely felt. Minor premise: You cannot choose to whom you are sexually attracted, and you cannot choose with whom you fall in love. Conclusion: Whether or not they are chosen, attraction and love should be consummated where sincerely felt. This simplistic syllogism (uncritical in its use of choice, love, sentiment, and sincerity) provides the rational foundation for a culture of often unrestrained, promiscuous, and unfaithful—yet indulgently sentimental—coupling. And it undergirds the push for same-sex marriage on both sides of the Atlantic.”
[...]
“The Canadian Polyamory Advocacy Association says that it “promotes legal, social, government, and institutional acceptance and support of polyamory, and advances the interests of the Canadian polyamorous community generally,” adding that “We’re here because we have a right to live with the people we love.”

There is also creeping advocacy of sibling marriage, particularly in northern European countries and in North America where it is an increasing topic of discussion within the GSA (genetic sexual attraction) movement. ”

“logic is quite straightforward: the intended change in the definition of marriage would mean that marriage as traditionally defined NO LONGER EXISTS. Thus heterosexual people would no longer have the right to enter into an institution understood to be only possible for heterosexuals, as doubly recognising both the unique social significance of male/female relationship and the importance of the conjugal act which leads naturally to the procreation of children who are then reared by their biological parents.

In effect, if marriage is now understood as a lifelong sexual contract between any two adult human persons with no specification of gender, then the allowance of gay marriage RENDERS ALL MARRIAGES “GAY MARRIAGES”.

I believe that anonymous sex with strangers is immoral, unhealthy and just plain weird. That said, if one is going to engage in it, why do it in a public restroom? Why not a car, the woods, a hotel room, etc.? Seriously, public restrooms, particularly for men, are often nasty. When I use the restroom, say at a rest stop on while on a road trip, I’m just there long enough to do my business. And I try to avoid touching anything and watch where I step. A public restroom is about the last place on earth that I would to have sex with anyone. It’s a gross enough place to make celibacy sound like a pleasant alternative to sex.

My question is what on earth makes these men want to have sex in a public restroom, particularly as there are other places, even in conservative areas of the nation, that one could go? I just don’t get it.

Most gay men do not live lives that resemble the Salon writer’s life. But gay male culture does celebrate and promote casual sex and does frown on criticism of it. AIDS and HIV are another one of the “things that you’re not supposed to notice”, especially today.

Sigh. Fair enough, I can’t really deny that there’s a lot of truth to this, or at least to the part about gay male culture and casual sex. I just want to stress that self-identified straight people engage in the practice too (sometimes while hypocritically denouncing it), so it’s not entirely fair to put all of the blame on the gays.

But I disagree with the bit about HIV and AIDS. I actually find that the gay community tries to foster an attitude of awareness, acceptance, and empowerment towards those that are infected. And I think this is a good thing.

When I lived in Washington, some famous person, can’t remember who, was arrested for having gay sex in a public toilet. I asked a friend of mine — an out gay conservative — what on earth the attraction to sex in a foul-smelling public toilet was. He smiled and said, “To some of us, it smells like nectar.”

Not to justify anonymous sexual encounters, but is a man who writes of such an encounter that “We were just there, together, as ourselves” best described as “sexually insatiable” or as lonely as hell and looking for love in all the wrong places?

Rod, I don’t know what’s up with you lately. The reason liberals like me read your site is that you are rational and coherent in your arguments, and we can follow them because they are not just the same old conservative arguments being screamed at us from across the political divide. Mostly, you seem sincere in wanting to engage people who think differently than you. But lately it seems that you are more interested in the “gotcha” approach. “See, said group (gay men, people of color, liberals, feminists, pro-choice activists, religious progressives) are hypocrites! Here is an example!

Please! We liberals can find plenty of our own examples of conservative hypocrisy to rail about and we can all play “gotcha” all day long.

Is this really what you’re about?

As for anonymous gay sex, the gay community is all over the map. Sure, the publications sell their ad space to those with the money, the hook up sites and the porn publishers. That doesn’t mean we all do it or support it. My own opinion is that the guys that use public spaces like truck stops and parks are usually not “gay.” They are same-sex attracted but mostly don’t identify as gay, many have wives and kids and live otherwise straight lives. The guy in Salon is an exception. There are those who long for the good old days when the closet forced us into those situations. And yes, there are many who are simply sexually immature. Anonymous truck stop sex is adolescent behavior.

There is also a movement in the gay men’s community to live healthier lives, become sexually mature, (which may or may not involve monogamy), and generally throw off the remnants of the time when social hatred drove us underground.

Are you bigoted for bringing it up? No, I don’t think that necessarily follows. When one finds behavior curious or disturbing, it should be ok to raise questions about it. But if it’s just to play “gotcha” then it may be bigoted.

The reason liberals like me read your site is that you are rational and coherent in your arguments, and we can follow them because they are not just the same old conservative arguments being screamed at us from across the political divide. Mostly, you seem sincere in wanting to engage people who think differently than you. But lately it seems that you are more interested in the “gotcha” approach. “See, said group (gay men, people of color, liberals, feminists, pro-choice activists, religious progressives) are hypocrites! Here is an example!

If you read me as saying “neener-neener, you do it too!”, then either you’re reading me wrong, or I’m not being clear. I only bring up these examples to examine in a critical way the standards we apply to judging and even talking about these extremely controversial issues. I don’t mean this disrespectfully, but it does seem that many of my liberal readers fall out with me when I express a coherently conservative opinion on an issue they feel strongly about. I don’t hold that against you, but I don’t think the charge that I’ve become some sort of talk radio robot is fair or accurate.

@Mitchell Young. I think you’re right – comprehensive liberal ideology will be enforced no matter what, the totalitarian instinct hasn’t just fallen down the anthropological plug hole, it’s in a new guise. If nature is no longer can be sought as a source of moral principles, we’re told to retreat into our subjective preferences. If old growth human ecology can be slashed and burned and replanted with a monoculture of desiring individual sovereign wills then logically you need a massive state to police, mediate, control, and educate for the space between them. And if will/desire is the measure of the right then the biggest, most ruthless wills exercise that right – and the biggest is the state. They want that power, all their thoughts are bent on it.

SSM kills the Christian church and marriage in one stroke – the two biggest sources of independence and moral authority outside the state and therefore rivals to liberal rule. Both are slated for destruction replaced with the cult of the state.

If B.O. is re-elected people who just got by will of necessity exchange ersatz religion for Christ – which is the whole point of life anyway. So a recapitulation of the drama

“don’t you know I have the power to crucify thee?
“You would not have …if it were not given to you from above”

is no surprise. What does give me intellectual vertigo is the alacrity with which people join the side of the Good Friday mob again as if they’d never heard of Jesus. That is spooky. Talking ‘war on women’ ‘gay rights’ ‘equal love’ as if they couldn’t see the logical implications of their political commitments.

If you read me as saying “neener-neener, you do it too!”, then either you’re reading me wrong, or I’m not being clear. I only bring up these examples to examine in a critical way the standards we apply to judging and even talking about these extremely controversial issues. I don’t mean this disrespectfully, but it does seem that many of my liberal readers fall out with me when I express a coherently conservative opinion on an issue they feel strongly about. I don’t hold that against you, but I don’t think the charge that I’ve become some sort of talk radio robot is fair or accurate.

“Talk radio robot”? Not at all. But there has been more than a little tu quoque in your reactions to your liberal readers lately. And it does seem that you only started airing the “questions” about the Trayvon killing when your two least-favorite African-American leaders stepped in. (I don’t think you’re a racist, but I also don’t think you’re well-suited commenting neutrally on Sharpton, for understandable reasons. His and Jackson’s mere presence seems to have set you off.)

But when I juxtapose your claim to “examine in a critical way the standards we apply to judging and even talking about these extremely controversial issues” with your reply to one of your liberal readers,

“If you don’t let me marry, I’m going to go out and fellate strangers in public urinals.” What could be more logical?

I’m not sure what to make of it. It’s hard to take seriously your frustration at being read unfairly when this is what you do with an argument having to do with exactly the sorts of things (enduring institutions) conservatives usually insist are crucial to reining in man’s worse impulses. If you disagree, or don’t want to get into it in this thread, that’s fine. But to pretend as if it’s a laughable argument is doing your readers the same disservice you are so quick to notice in us. Whatever else it is, it’s not “examining in a critical way.”

Frankly, I’d like to hear your response to the argument that this is male behavior, as opposed to (or alongside) gay behavior. That seems like a legitimate point, and it’s been consistently passed over.

I’m not sure what to make of it. It’s hard to take seriously your frustration at being read unfairly when this is what you do with an argument having to do with exactly the sorts of things (enduring institutions) conservatives usually insist are crucial to reining in man’s worse impulses.

Do you really think the only reason straight men don’t have sex in public places with strangers is because marriage tells us not to? I used to live in a neighborhood that was a big gay cruising area after midnight. Vice cops sometimes would raid the park. You could stand on our front porch and watch the steady stream of cars with male drivers headed down the street to the park area after the bars closed.

Heterosexuals just don’t do that. I don’t think it’s the case either that they don’t do it because women don’t do it, and therefore they don’t have the opportunity. Before I was married, I didn’t hang out with a chaste crowd, but I’m honestly hard pressed to imagine a single one of my straight male friends, even those who had serial sexual partners, who would have sought out anonymous sex in parks and public bathrooms if it had been available.

I’m not sure why that is. I concede that a lot of this is what you get when you have the male libido unrestrained. And of course women do, or did, impose certain restraints on male behavior. But I think it’s reasonable to wonder to what extent this restraint was a function of the legal and religious institution of marriage, and to what extent it had to do with something more fundamental.

Consider how the collapse of marriage in among African-Americans and now lower-class whites has affected the rate of out of wedlock childbearing. There is now little expectation that men in those communities who father children will care for those children. Marriage still exists as an institution for straights in those communities, but fewer and fewer men commit to it, or are expected to. The reasons are complex, I’m sure, but my point is simply that the existence of marriage itself is not a restraint on male sexual behavior, at least as long as women are willing to give them sex without expecting commitment.

What do you think about Dan Savage’s argument that gay marriages (gay male marriages?) ought not to be expected to be sexually monogamous, and straights ought to learn from this “healthy” flexibility? If I suggested marital flexibility of this sort to my wife, she would kick me out — and vice versa. That sounds like a selfish man’s idea of marriage. It doesn’t sound like marriage has restrained Dan Savage’s sex drive; rather, if Savage had his way, the gay male sex drive would reset the boundaries of marriage itself.

i>Yes, but country lifestyles are often subsidized by folks in cities. Kevin Williamson over at the National Review has written on this in relation to the highway projects of the Eisenhower era. Many people choose to live far from clustered services (both public and private) because they like a slower lifestyle, but country living isn’t a right, and if it costs way more to bring services to people far from cities than it does to improve said cities, I see no reason why a state government shouldn’t choose city bike lanes over fixing the roads in dying hamlets.

Because bike lanes tend to support the small rich coterie of lifestyle bikers and don’t have any measurable impact. and people live away from clustered services because city living is crap…it’s massively expensive for dirty, cramped housing, higher crime rates, poorer services and corruption, and to support those rich people, exurbs and long commutes develop anyways as they price the service workers out of the market.

That city infrastructure also requires massive investment. The big crisis imo is that one day aging urban infrastructure is going to start to fail, HARD. That’s going to be such a drain as not to be funny.

Frankly, I’d like to hear your response to the argument that this is male behavior, as opposed to (or alongside) gay behavior. That seems like a legitimate point, and it’s been consistently passed over.

except that it’s not. The pill increased women’s sexual frequency and behavior as well. For gays, the only real moderating force hasn’t been marriage, but disease. If anything monogamy is a gay idea as a response to AIDS-if it never existed, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.

It’s usually when consequences of sex are absent we see this, on both genders. It’s more a gay thing because gay sex doesn’t need to deal with the massive specter of pregnancy, and as the threat of aids has receded, the promiscuity returns.

Um, you are leaving out the ubiquity of prostitution. Maybe that’s slightly less objectionable because the hookers and their clients usually retire to a cheap no-tell motel (though some things do happen in cars too), but it is still evidence of rampant promiscuity among heterosexuals. The first year I lived in Florida the section of US 19 near my house was infamous for being “hookers highway”. About six months later the police mounted a major sting operation setting up a tent behind the Ramada Inn where they could easily book and process scads of “ladies” and johns on the spot. Sounds very similar to the police hauling the gay sex trolls out of your park.

And Rod, there are certain people who get a big rush off sex in public places. This is likely a species of exhibitionism. I’d be surprised if you’ve never met someone like that. I’ve never really run with a wild crowd, but I did know someone who bragged about having (straight) sex in all sorts of inappropriate places, including his work place and a doctor’s office. Once the guy even repaired with some drunk floozy to the restoom of a bar we were in (it was a one-person facility with a door that locked) and gave us the play-by-play afterward. I also knew some folks who were members of a sex club that hosted orgies in various venues. The police raided one of their events at a rented-out club (though the people i knew were not present that night) and found something that looked like a springtime snake rut going on on the dance floor– and juicy detail: the attendees included a state legislator. Sex-crazy people come in all varieties.

Yes, a political monevent was. But it enjoyed almost no successes at that point. An how on earth is politics responsible for an epidemic? Are you seriously claiming that the virus was passed around because people got together to protest? If it were the flu that would be possible, but you can’t get HIV from casual contact.
I believe the earliest identified gay person with AIDS in this country (there were some straight people known to have had previous to him) was a flight attendant who left infected partners behind him in every city. It wasn’t “gay liberation” that facilitaterd that behavior: a great many of his sex partners were in the closet (as the vast majority of gays in the late 70s were). No, it was air travel that allowed this to happen. So why not indict air travel instead?

“I don’t mean this disrespectfully, but it does seem that many of my liberal readers fall out with me when I express a coherently conservative opinion on an issue they feel strongly about.”

Sorry, that isn’t what pushed me over the edge here. It was the strawman you raised at the start of the post: “As we are all told, it is wrong, wrong, wrong to stereotype gay men as sexually insatiable and indiscriminate. If you have a negative or even somewhat critical view of gay male culture, you are not entitled to notice . . .”

Do you raise this non-universal “unspoken rule” because of fear of being criticized before you have even stated your case? I think you could make a decent point without this a slam to the PC thought police.

Before I was married, I didn’t hang out with a chaste crowd, but I’m honestly hard pressed to imagine a single one of my straight male friends, even those who had serial sexual partners, who would have sought out anonymous sex in parks and public bathrooms if it had been available.

My first reaction to this is “how would you or could you know?” Since the opportunity didn’t exist, they hadn’t faced the temptation. But even assuming you’re right, the fact is that some men do engage in anonymous sex, with prostitutes.

“Heterosexuals” do do that. When they want to have gay sex. Because they feel the need to cloak themselves in a public “heterosexual” identity.

Even gay boogeyman Dan Savage has railed against bath houses, in part using the reasoning here– that there’s simply no need to “hide” like this, not to mention the public health problems it causes. (have you ever read his thoughts on the matter?)

Cultural conservatives are only motivated by a desire to hold power; cultural liberals are motivated by the common good. What could be more logical?

What else am I supposed to think? I think it’s fairly undeniable the the liberal side has lurched further and further to the right in order to accommodate the concerns of the conservatives, and yet the conservatives are still fighting the same battles from decades ago that liberals thought they “resolved” by coming to an even truce with them over. And when one ideology is explicit egalitarian and the other is explicitly hierarchical, and when it is rather common to see you question the premises of the legitimacy of the outrage of liberal groups but not to question the influence and agenda of conservatives interest groups (eg, the NRA’s and ALEC’s role in creating the Zimmerman situation even in the face of liberal accommodation of right-wing views on gun rights), then I have to think that this isn’t a “policy dispute” as such but a war for dominance about culture and identity.

Do you really think the only reason straight men don’t have sex in public places with strangers is because marriage tells us not to?

Lots of straight men do, however, employ prostitutes, and they do so even in marriage.

What do you think about Dan Savage’s argument that gay marriages (gay male marriages?) ought not to be expected to be sexually monogamous, and straights ought to learn from this “healthy” flexibility?

It’s always with the caveat that both partners have to be willing and understand exactly what they’re getting into. He’s well aware that it’s not for everyone — or even most people — but that this kind of arrangement is preferable to divorce if sexual fulfillment is the only or main reason for divorce in a given marriage.

It seems to be an attempt to salvage relationships by acknowledging what goes on in marriages anyway, with an effort to make it open rather than behind the other partner’s back. Sullivan’s right to detect a great deal of conservative ethics in Savage’s advice, especially in his effort to approach relationships realistically.

There is also a movement in the gay men’s community to live healthier lives, become sexually mature, (which may or may not involve monogamy), and generally throw off the remnants of the time when social hatred drove us underground.

Was the word “mature” chosen out of a hat? You have completely emptied it of meaning and re-purposed it as a vague, feel-good sentiment, but, all-importantly, one which preserves the ability of gay men to have multiple sex partners.

The CDC estimates (all statistics available online) that 1 in 5 urban men-who-have-sex-with-men are infected with HIV, and that 30,000 new men-who-have-sex-with-men become infected every year in the US. That’s about the equivalent of every single gay man in a medium-sized city like Austin becoming infected *every year.*

Did you actually read the New York Times Magazine article about Savage, in which he and his husband discuss their marriage?

Here are the two key paragraphs:

In their own marriage, Savage and Miller practice being what he calls “monogamish,” allowing occasional infidelities, which they are honest about. Miller was initially opposed to the idea. “You assume as a younger person that all relationships are monogamous and between two people, that love means nothing can come between you,” said Miller, who met Savage at a club in 1995, when he was 23 and Savage was 30. “Dan has taught me to be more realistic about that kind of stuff.

“It was four or five years before it came up,” Miller said. “It’s not about having three-ways with somebody or having an open relationship. It is just sort of like, Dan has always said if you have different tastes, you have to be good, giving and game, and if you are not G.G.G. for those tastes, then you have to give your partner the out. It took me a while to get down with that.” When I asked Savage how many extramarital encounters there have been, he laughed shyly. “Double digits?” I asked. He said he wasn’t sure; later he and Miller counted, and he reported back that the number was nine. “And far from it being a destabilizing force in our relationship, it’s been a stabilizing force. It may be why we’re still together.”

I’ve read Savage’s books “The Kid” and “The Commitment,” and from them you learn a few more crucial details, like the fact that Savage was the wealthy only breadwinner and his husband was at home raising their child.

To recap:

Savage waited until he and his husband were married, had a kid together, and his husband had quit his job to stay home with the kid, before Savage began pressuring him to open up their marriage.

Savage was the older man, the only breadwinner, and feels comfortable in public, in the NYT, stating that if his husband hadn’t come around on the “openness” thing, they might not still be together.

Savage’s husband used to believe that “love means nothing can ever come between you,” but his husband has “taught him to be more realistic about all that stuff.”

What a loving, respectful, model relationship to hold up for the world!

Surely every mother of a gay son hopes her child experiences such loving kindness!

I don’t think [that marriage tames promiscuity] is all that strange, or even controversial. In China, the one chile policy has reportedly let to a situation where there are millions and millions of surplus young men who have no chance of marrying. People widely expect these young men to start killing people or otherwise making a mess of things.

Is the idea that marriage is a civilizing force all that controversial?

This is not a good comparison. The Chinese issue is whether the men will have access to a woman as a sexual or relationship partner, not whether their relationships will be recognized as a marriage.

The question here is whether legalizing same-sex marriage will push homosexuals who would otherwise be promiscuous to enter monogamous relationships.

The suspicion is that a lot of homosexuals want the legal benefits of marriage (joint tax returns, no estate tax on property) while still maintaining a non-monogamous lifestyle.

First of all, I know plenty of gay men who criticize anonymous sex or casual hook-ups. I’ve voiced those critiques myself. Nobody called me an Uncle Tom. The gay men I know idealize and aspire to strong longterm relationships (kinda like most straight men I know). (Though both gay men and straight men are prone to falling short of that ideal. But that’s more a matter of men being male, I think.)

Second, criticizing casual sexual encounters doesn’t make you a bigot, Rod. Feeling that gay couples should be burdened with civil disabilities
is another matter, though.

This really seemed like a joust with a straw gay. Rest stop encounters exist, kinda like prostitution. Most folks don’t use it and don’t condone it. And it’s just fine to say so.

quote: “Um, you are leaving out the ubiquity of prostitution. Maybe that’s slightly less objectionable because the hookers and their clients usually retire to a cheap no-tell motel (though some things do happen in cars too), but it is still evidence of rampant promiscuity among heterosexuals.”

There is a minority of men who do seek anonymous sex with prostitutes. However, it doesn’t follow that the existence of said minority of men constitutes evidence of rampant promiscuity among heterosexuals. Indeed, it is pretty safe to say that a solid majority of heterosexuals find prostitution abhorrent.

Even beyond all this, it isn’t remotely common for heterosexual men who have sex with prostitutes to do so in nasty public restrooms. There are hardly any heterosexuals who are so sick that they find the smell of public restrooms (i.e. feces and urine) to be that of “nectar.” The bottom line is gays who seek anonymous sex in public restrooms take depravity to a whole new level.

What do you think about Dan Savage’s argument that gay marriages (gay male marriages?) ought not to be expected to be sexually monogamous, and straights ought to learn from this “healthy” flexibility? If I suggested marital flexibility of this sort to my wife, she would kick me out — and vice versa.

Dan makes two points 1) these arrangements should be negotiated before marriage; and 2) when such arrangements are not disclosed, a lot of straight marriages are in fact monogamish.

“The suspicion is that a lot of homosexuals want the legal benefits of marriage (joint tax returns, no estate tax on property) while still maintaining a non-monogamous lifestyle.”

Of course, with the benefits of marriage come some pretty serious responsibilities, and you can’t sign up for one without the other.

Besides, a certain percentage of heterosexuals marry only for the benefits (think immigration) yet we’re not banning heterosexual marriage. Why assume homosexuals are more likely to enter into marriages of convenience that heterosexuals?

And finally, you may suspect that, but is there any evidence? Same sex marriage has been around long enough now – almost 10 years in Canada and longer in some places in Europe – that there should be some evidence for or against your suspicion. I’ve lived in Canada for seven years, and I don’t see any evidence that homosexuals are marrying only for the government benefits, and I haven’t heard of any studies that show that either. At some point, opponents of same sex marriage need to stop theorizing about hypothetical harms and look real world evidence.

What do you think about Dan Savage’s argument that gay marriages (gay male marriages?) ought not to be expected to be sexually monogamous, and straights ought to learn from this “healthy” flexibility? If I suggested marital flexibility of this sort to my wife, she would kick me out — and vice versa. That sounds like a selfish man’s idea of marriage. It doesn’t sound like marriage has restrained Dan Savage’s sex drive; rather, if Savage had his way, the gay male sex drive would reset the boundaries of marriage itself.

As someone who knows a great number of gays, I can assure you that Dan Savage speaks no more for “all homosexual men” than Rush Limbaugh speaks for “all conservatives” or Al Sharpton speaks for “all African-Americans.”

I see no reason to believe that the “gay male” sex drive is all that distinct from the regular old “male” sex drive, with the distinction that it’s harder to bed a woman (even these days) than a man. This imposes limits on kinks (or perversions, if you prefer), such as public sex.

Having said that, the idea that many heterosexual men wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to have as much sex as they wanted is, to me, silly. Prostitution is the “oldest profession” because it has ALWAYS been with us. When Americans held slaves, American men got those slaves pregnant. The lesson I see here is that given license to do what one wants in the sexual realm, people will take that license and run with it, gay, straight or otherwise.

I’m also willing to grant the homosexual community some time to come around to societal norms, as society stops abusing them for being gay. Andrew Sullivan got a cold reception from the gay community when he first advocated gay marriage in the 80′s, because he was arguing for “hetero-normative behavior.” Now the gay community broadly supports marriage. Bath houses used to be commonplace, now they are less so. Gay culture is moving toward monogamy faster than straight culture is moving away from it. These things take time, though.

Re: There is a minority of men who do seek anonymous sex with prostitutes.

Probably true, but I suspect that that minority is larger than you think. There are a lot of ladies of evening.
But do you have any reason to suppose that it isn’t just a minority of gays having public sex? Why assume it’s everyone? I’ve only heard one gay guy talk about doing it at a rest stop and at the risk of being cruel, he was very ill-favored and probably needed a wall between him and partner in order to score.
(Disclaimer: when I was 18 and traveling home on a long road trip in the aftermath of my brother’s suicide I was propositioned by some obese troll in a freeway reststop. You may be certain I do not have warm feelings about that sort of behavior.)

Martin Snigg,
Are you a Christian? How can you believe that anything can “kill” the Church? It has survived tyrants from Nero to Stalin, as well as the Renaissance popes. See: gates of hell not prevailing, etc.

JonF: What if I, as a Christian, offer the premise that “the Church” is not a mystical or metaphysical entity, not a quasi-extension of the Godhead, but merely a fellowship of believers, a human institution which is good to the extent it aids believers in coming closer to God and carrying out God’s commands?

Since the concept “church” was nonexistent at the time Jesus allegedly made the statement about “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it,” since “hell” has a dubious pedigree in Hebrew thought, but is really more of a Greek concept, it is almost certain that gentile Christianity has never understood what Jesus was talking about, and it may now be irrecoverable.

The Church has not survived “tyrants from Nero to Stalin.” Various churches have survived various tyrants. Something killed the Albigensian church.

Siarlys,
If you think the Church is nothing more than a bunch of people meeting in a building, then yes, the church is very mortal and fallible: the believers will die, the building will probably fall to decrepitude and be torn down someday, and time conquers all things.
Some of us understand the Church as a bit more than a Sunday coffee klatsch in a (hopefully) pretty building with hymns.

“What I don’t get is why it is only permissible within our media culture to observe things like this guy’s celebration of the rest-stop liberty if you find it something worth celebrating.” ——————————

Because the media culture is more about sending moral messages than about describing the world. Why did people read Pravda each day? So they could know what opinions it was safe to hold. Why do people become journalists? So they can define the boundaries of the morally acceptable and the morally unacceptable. Since all things gay are not just good they are great, gayness can only be celebrated not disparaged. Disparaging gayness only reveals one to be an outsider and a person insufficiently interested in getting along with the in crowd that you rebel against their social mores. If Henry James were alive today he’d be portraying journalists and others talking about gays. Instead of The Bostonians we’d have Castro Street, the novel.